LA CRESCENTA — Despite coming into the Tri-Cities District 16 Junior Baseball Tournament of Champions as the 11th seed, the Jewel City Bears are proving that designation somewhat meaningless, as they won their second game of the tournament and...

Bits and pieces from the local sports scene.
Player among 24 national finalists in competition: Burbank resident Erin Lashkari is headed to the 2011 MLB All-Star Game in Phoenix.
Lashkari, who plays for the Skittles in the Burbank Park, Recreation and...

Bit and pieces from the local sports scene.
Indians can't claim tournament crown: The Burroughs High girls' basketball team advanced to the championship game of the College of the Canyons Tournament on Saturday.
Unfortunately for the Indians, they...

GLENDALE — The San Francisco Giants' bid for a second consecutive championship might have become more difficult.
Freddy Sanchez, a Burbank High graduate and former Glendale Community College standout who helped San Francisco win the World Series...

Throughout the past year, the local community experienced its share of important, interesting and significant sports stories. Some of the stories enlightened us, some informed us and others just entertained us.
Although many of the stories deserve recognition, a select few stood out among the others.
Chosen by the Leader, here is a list of the top 10 stories of 2012.
1) Memorial Field project finally finished: After months of construction and the displacement of the three local high school football...

BURBANK — High school softball pitchers are getting used to dealing with a different dimension when it comes to their delivery to home plate.
This is the first season the pitching rubber has been moved back three feet to 43 feet, which will likely be a benefit for hitters. Area hurlers are adapting to the longer dimensions.
"We have had our pitchers throwing from 46 feet, so they can get used to pitching from a longer distance," Bellarmine-Jefferson High Coach John Castaneda said. "We want...

OLIVE PARK — With Burroughs High entering Thursday's Pacific League game as the reigning league champion and Crescenta Valley coming in as, arguably, as the league's hottest team, the showdown certainly had its fair share of implications.
And though there's still plenty of season left, concluding Thursday's action with an 8-2 win over the visiting Falcons at Olive Park, proved to be a rather emphatic victory for the Indians.
"It's one thing to talk about being league champs and beating CV and...

Looking to shore up their severely depleted starting pitching staff, the New York Yankees acquired Glendale native Brandon McCarthy from the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sunday in exchange for pitcher Vidal Nuno.
McCarthy, who turned 31 on Monday, could make his debut with New York as early as Wednesday against the host Cleveland Indians.
"It's something I'm really excited about," McCarthy told the Associated Press. "It's still the Yankees, no matter what. If you don't know baseball, you know the Yankees....

Good morning, 818 readers. Today is Tuesday, July 8, 2014. The high predicted for Glendale is 87 and low of 67, according to National Weather Service experts.
Your top regional news:
- Nearly 100 protesters arrived at the grand opening of Hobby Lobby in Burbank on Monday. The Green family, which owns the craft chain, argued that forcing the company to provide IUDs and the so-called morning after pill -- a requirement under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare -- went against its evangelical...

Crescenta Valley High baseball is not short on memorable seasons and memorable performances — particularly on the pitching mound.
Alas, memorable playoff runs had been absent from Falcons chronicle in the recent past.
That changed dramatically and emphatically in the spring of 2014.
While Crescenta Valley was very much a team of underdogs that played hard, clutch and fundamentally sound in rising to the occasion of the CIF Southern Section Division II postseason, without the brilliance in the...

Things finally got moving for a handful of baseball players with local ties on the final day of the Major League Baseball First Year Player Draft on Saturday.
While the wait was longer than hoped for a quartet of players who’ve spent time with three different local teams, they all realized their long-time dreams when they were drafted between the 13th and 32nd rounds.
A trio of current Glendale Angelenos — Jimmy Bosco, Aaron Brown and Keaton Leach, who also spent this past regular season...